


Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Lovegood

by nightfalltwen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 02:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12925374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightfalltwen/pseuds/nightfalltwen
Summary: George boards up his shop and leaves town, swearing never to return. She's the last person he expects to change his mind.





	Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Lovegood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the **2017 Interhouse Fest**. The title is from _Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird_ by Wallace Stevens.  It's one of my favourite poems and I feel it is very Luna-esque.  Special thank you to the mods for running this wonderful fest.  Extra special thank you to my beta **cryptaknight** at whom I threw this fic at the Nth hour without even telling her I was writing it.  I'm sorry darling.  Love ya.

**i.**

"Fucking fuckity fuck _fuck!_ "

George swept his arms across the workbench, pushing all the ongoing projects off the edge of it.  He snatched up Fred's notebook and shook it angrily, scattering loose pages with his brother's unreadable handwriting onto the floor.  Flinging the book, it hit the wall with a less than satisfying 'thwack' before falling behind a low shelf.  He spun around, kicking a box of puking pastilles and scattering the round tins of them across the floor.  Letting out almost a snarl of frustration, he stormed out of the lab.

Upstairs, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes ( _Now Back and Wheezier Than Ever!_ ) was quiet.  It wasn't empty; there were customers, lots of them in fact.  But the atmosphere was that of a cemetery and George glowered at the whole operation.  What used to be blissful chaos—when the shop first opened—was now quiet browsing as if he were running a library.  He still made bank; sales were better than they had been the first few months, but it felt like pity.  Like they were only patronizing the shop out of some sort of obligation to him because of Fred.

He hated it.

A young woman took her purchase from Verity and then scurried past him toward the door, glancing back with an almost tearful expression before she left.  George stalked to the door and flipped the sign from open to closed.

"Out," he said.  "Everyone out!  Shop's closed."

There were a few murmurs from the customers but they quietly left, the bell above the door jangling mournfully with each departure.  Marching behind the counter, George grabbed the business chequebook from under the counter and wrote out three month's worth of wages.  He held it out to Verity, the paper trembling in his hand.  He wasn't sure if the trembling was anger, frustration, anxiety or a terrible combination of all three.

"This should be enough until you find another job.  If you need a reference, let me know."

Verity opened her mouth to say something and George wished that she would.  He wished that she would scold him for being an arse or that she didn't want his money and that this whole loss of Fred was an enormous shit pile.  But she didn't.  Like everyone else, it was all eggshells and sad looks.  George scowled and gave the cheque a bit of a shake until she took it and her things and followed the last customer out the door.

Waving his wand, he heard the heavy bolt slide into place.

He emptied the register and the small safe under the counter, shoving all the coins into a deposit bag for the bank.  Grabbing his cloak, he gave one last sweeping look around the shop.  A dark thought flitted across his mind that it would be easier if he set the whole place on fire and was done with it.  But then he heard Fred's voice in the back of his head telling him that he was just letting the Death Eaters win.  George wasn't sure when his twin had become the voice of reason inside his own head, but  he  had.

And it saved the shop from destruction on more than one occasion.

Once the money was packed up, George apparated outside.  Another wave of his wand and the windows were covered with heavy shutters.  He shoved his wand into his pocket and stormed down the cobbled street toward the bank.  If he'd been less focused on his own anger, he would have noticed her watching from a doorway.  If his expression had been less stormy, she might have approached.  

Instead neither of those things happened.  George went to the bank, deposited his money, set up automatic rent payments on the shop for at least a year and then left.

Left Diagon.  Left his flat.  Left London.  Left England.

Left.

**ii.**

Her breathy coos, with every bounce on his lap, were all an act.  George knew it.  He also didn't care that much.  Each bounce caused the bedsprings to make a tiny squeak and he'd started to count the noises instead of paying attention to the pretty little witch riding his cock.  He reached up and cupped his hands against her breasts, going through the motions that he always did.  The sex wasn't bad; she was good at her job and any other wizard would be lost in her soft brown eyes and silky gold curls (both above and below).

" _Ja_!"

George watched her arch her back, arms stretched above her head and her lips parted in a wanton 'o' of satisfaction.  The act was really good.  He sighed and put his hands to the witch's hips and held her still.  "I'm done," he said, his tone dull.

A confusing line of Dutch words that George didn't try to understand tumbled out of the woman's mouth.  He shrugged his shoulders and gestured for her to get off his lap.  He reached over and grabbed a towel, wiping himself before he swung his legs off the bed and rose to dress.  The woman lay sprawled on the coverlet, her round arse turned toward him.  George gave it a gentle tap and then left coins on the bed before he left the room and made his way through the brothel to the street.

Soft hooting sounded from a lamp post as George turned down a curving lane that would take him out of the Red Light district and onto the main streets of Amsterdam and alongside one of the many canals in the city.  He frowned and rubbed his rough chin, looking up at the tawny owl that sat next to the glowing lamp.  The bird held out a letter and even though there was no expression on its face, it seemed to be judging him for the location of its delivery.

"Take it back to her," he said, pointing in a vague-ish direction of what might be England.

The bird swooped down to the street and sat in front of him, extending the envelope.  An insistent _Take the damn thing.  Your mother isn't going to stop sending them!_ in its movements.  George skirted around the owl, not bending down to take its delivery.

"I told them I wasn't coming back," he argued with the owl.  "So take the letter back to my mother.  Return to sender.  Address unknown.  Whatever it takes."  His foot shot out.  Not to kick the owl, but to startle it enough so that it would get the picture.  "Go on!  Shoo!"

"Have you tried taking the letter and just throwing it away?"  A voice spoke up from behind him causing George to yelp in surprise and spin around.  

He grabbed his chest even though he knew that it wouldn't make a difference to his pounding heart.  Of all the people he ever expected to run into just outside the Red Light District of Amsterdam, Luna was not even remotely close to his list.   And yet there she was, standing (on one leg, apparently) beside one of the trees growing at the edge of the canal almost as if she had been waiting for him this whole time.  

George glanced back over his shoulder at where he'd been previously and something about the way Luna stared at him made the heat crawl up his neck and turn his ear hot with embarrassment.

"What are you doing here?" he asked finally.

"Writing a story on the influence of nargles abroad," she said as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  Then Luna lowered her one foot to the ground and bent over to scoop up a dark satchel that had been leaning against a tree.  The bouncy frills of her skirt inched up higher on her thighs as she did so and George had to look away.

She turned to face him.  "You look thirsty.  Shall we go?"

**iii.**

"Nargles, huh..." George took another pull from the beer bottle.  He sat there for a moment, considering her.  "Did my mother send you?"

Luna perched on the stool next to him, peering at the small glass of _jenever_ in front of her.  She leaned over and delicately sipped from the liquid without touching her lips to the glass.  George was impressed.  He hadn't taken Luna for a drinker, but she seemed to know her way around a glass of Dutch gin.

Tapping her lip, she peered at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.  "Does it count if she asked me to talk to you while I was doing my article?  I was already going to be travelling.  She didn't quite _send_ me."

"Believe me," George said flatly.  "She sent you."

"Alright then," Luna smiled brightly, leaning down to take another sip from her glass.  "Then yes.  She sent me."

"But why?"

"Oh, I'm not terribly sure about that.  She asked me to talk to you while I was abroad.  And now I'm talking to you, so I suppose I've done what I was asked."

George finished his beer and signalled to the bartender for another.  He wasn't sure what to make of Luna's statement other than it was a very Luna-like statement and she didn't seem to want to push him in any sort of 'maybe you should go home' direction.  Of that he was truly appreciative.  But it was also very confusing.  Why would she have gone out of her way to find him in a city of nearly a million people if she wasn't going to push him to return to England?

She reached out and took hold of his hand, squeezing it before she hopped down off the stool.  "You look very well," she said.  "I'll tell your mother that so she won't worry so much."

A wry laugh caught in his throat.  "My mother?  Not worry?  That'll be the day."

"Nevertheless, I'll tell her."  Luna stepped closer and pressed a kiss to his cheek, a slight hint of juniper berries floating in the air around her.  She straightened, smiled and then walked away without another word.

George sat there, second bottle of beer hovering between the counter and his lips.  He dropped it back onto the damp coaster, dug into his pocket and threw down enough euro to cover the tab before hopping down from his seat.  He burst out of the pub and onto the street, almost stumbling as he scanned the area.  She was almost at the corner, walking with a purposeful swing in her step that caused her skirts to sweep back and forth like a frilly little bell around her hips.

He cupped a hand to his mouth.  "Oi!  Luna!  Wait up!"

**iv.**

He kissed her in his hotel room.

He took her hand and drew her close.

He touched her.

He spread her legs.

He tasted her.  He watched her.  He pushed inside her.

He came with her.

He floated away with her.

**v.**

In that hour of dawn just before the sky started to turn purple, George's eyes flittered open.  He turned on his side and tucked an arm up under his head, watching Luna sleep.  He traced a lock of her hair down her shoulder and over her collarbone to the underside of her breast where it curled up around her nipple.  George pulled the blanket up over her naked chest and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck.

They hadn't talked much.  Maybe that was where the problem was for him.  He'd spent only a few hours with her and dragged her off to his bed.  Not that she'd protested.  She hadn't.

But she was Luna Lovegood.  

And the monster of regret, ever present in his life, had started to gnaw at his feet, working its way up to his chest.  She deserved better than this.  She certainly deserved better than him with his demons and the gaping hole in his chest.  He wasn't a whole person anymore and he couldn't begin to see himself as someone worthy of her.  Or anyone for that matter.

Cupping his hand over his face, George sat there as the sky went from black to purple to shades of blue.

And cried.

**vi.**

"Here," Luna said, tucking the tails of her blouse into her skirt.  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small card.

He gave her a questioning look, but took the card and read the writing on it.  "A doctor?"

She nodded and crossed to the window, reaching behind the radiator and pulling out a pair of knickers.  George felt his cheeks go pink when he remembered tossing them there in his haste to get her undressed.  If she was upset or irritated at having to look around the room for her discarded clothing, she didn't show it.  Luna nodded her head toward the card while tugging on the undergarments.

"Sometimes it helps to talk to someone."  She came over to the bed and sat beside him.  "I'm okay at listening, but a professional setting might do you a world of good."

He frowned, the monster turning from regret to irritation.  "A shrink?"

After the battle, after the war.  His mother had tried to get him to go see someone.

_"Don't open the shop, George," Molly pleaded.  "You need to have a chance to mourn.  We all do."_

_"Fred always talked about what we were going to do with the shop once we'd gotten through this.  I'm not going to let him down!  I can't."_

But he _had_ let his brother down.  That was the worst of it.

"I don't need this," he said, holding the card out to her, angry at the perplexed tilt of her head and her steady gaze as she tugged on her socks, first one very long and one very small.  He stood and walked over to her, setting the card on the table next to the radiator before stalking off to the bath.

**vii.**

The water ran hot behind him, filling the small room with steam and clouding the mirror.  George swiped his hand across the surface.  He turned his face slightly to hide the disfigured ear and suddenly it was Fred staring back at him, exactly the same and yet still very, very different.  The reflection didn't talk.  Or rather it didn't talk in words.  Just thoughts.  Thoughts that ran through George's head and curled around his heart in a agonizing squeeze.

_She's right, George, and you know it._

He leaned on the sink and sucked in a breath.  "Shut up, Fred," he muttered.  "I'm doing fine."

_Oh yeah, I can see where 'fine' has got you._

George's hand curled into a fist and just as he was about to hit the mirror with it, he heard a sound from out in the room.  She was gone.  The card still sat on the table where he'd left it, but Luna was gone along with all of her things.  George pushed the curtain aside and peered out the window.  On the sidewalk below, he could see her walking with her hand outstretched.  Somehow she'd found herself something crumbly and the bits were falling to the ground to tempt all the pigeons around her.  The followed her movements like a small army until a young man on a bike came speeding down the lane.  

The birds took to the sky, a whirlwind of wings and feathers.

And then she was gone.

**viii.**

"You can't sleep on our sofa forever.  It's not practical."

"I'm not going home to live with mum, Ginny."

"Isn't there a perfectly good flat right above your shop?  It hasn't vanished in the six months you were gone  Ron and Harry will even help you move back in.  You know they will."

"Thanks, but I heard Harry's eyes roll from here.  I don't think he's interested."

"They weren't rolling.  They were glancing to the side."

"I'll be out of your hair before the wedding."

"You're my brother and I love you, but it needs to be by the weekend. I can't do this anymore."

George turned over and looked at his sister, unable to explain why walking past _The Quibbler_ offices was next to impossible.  Not when all he thought about was swinging skirts and birds and Dutch gin and kisses.  She didn't know.  Or at least he didn't think she knew.  Not about Luna.  If Luna had said something it would be an entirely different Ginny staring back at him.  Quite possibly with flames in her eyes.

"Fine.  I'll leave."

Ginny reached out and touched his chin.  "It doesn't have to be far away.  Just something that is your own."

"But it's not my own," he said.  "It's his too."

**ix.**

George dropped his shoulder bag on the bed, waving his hand at the cloud of dust that rose up from the quilt.  The flat above the shop was just as he had left it.  A little worse for wear and he really should have made sure things were clean before he'd left for the continent.  Resisting the urge to call upon his mum to help with the cleaning, George got to work.  Soon brooms were sweeping about the floor and the dusty bedding was being swapped out for clean.

Lifting a bag of trash, George went down to the back door to throw it in the large bin outside of the shop.

When he returned to the back door, there was a vase of sunflowers sitting on the step with a little card that said: _Welcome home!_

"Luna?"

George turned quickly, expecting to see a swirl of skirts and a soft smile, but only faced an empty space between his shop and the one next-door and a lot of silence.  Bending down, he picked up the vase and carried it inside, thoughts of her tugging at all parts of his mind and more questions than he could answer starting to build up inside of him.  Why hadn't she come to see him and give him the flowers personally?

**x.**

He found the card in the bottom of his bag, folded in half and torn along one side.  George stood at the trash bin, holding it, and he truly did want to just throw it away.  He didn't need a shrink to tell him that he was struggling with the loss of his brother.  He was well aware of his struggles.

_Sometimes it helps to talk to someone._

He did want to speak to someone.  But that someone was proving to be more elusive than he'd ever imagined.  Always in and out of her office following leads on stories that _The Quibbler_ was publishing and never staying for more than a moment.  She flitted away like a sparrow on the wing and short of a net, he wasn't sure if he would ever catch her.

With a sigh, George flipped the card over and looked at the name and address.

 _Do it, Georgie._ Fred's voice whispered in his ear.   _You need to._

Crushing the card in his hand, George grabbed his jacket and left the flat.

**xi.**

"I think we've made some good progress today, Mr Weasley." Doctor Upland closed the folder and flicked a wand, sending it off to a filing cabinet.

The older woman had steely grey hair and equally steely grey eyes.  George imagined that if she'd been a little taller and a little bit more Scottish, she might have passed for McGonagall's twin.  But she was neither.  The muggleborn witch had brought her practice from America as a favour to a cousin in England who wanted to give the survivors of the Voldemort regime an outlet to heal.

How Luna had come across the woman or her card, George didn't know.  But he was starting to learn that it didn't matter.  Because all that did matter was that Luna had thrown him a life preserver in that small piece of paperstock.  Having a neutral third party to let his thoughts and emotions out had made all the fear dissolve.  And he talked.  He talked about Fred.  He talked about the anger he had toward Rookwood.  He talked about the resentment he had toward Percy and how he'd hated himself for even entertaining the idea that it should have been Percy instead of Fred.  He talked about things that he and Fred had done as children and how they'd fooled everyone on more than one occasion.

He talked about growing a beard while he was gone so that he wouldn't look like Fred anymore.

He talked about the choice to shave it off and how he'd started to accept the person in the mirror again.

He talked about finding Fred's invention journal in the basement of the shop and trying some of the new ideas, but twisting them into his own.

And he started to feel the black spot in his chest being replaced by yellow sunflowers.

"Tell me about something that made you smile when we see each other next," Doctor Upland said.  "I think your brother would be alright with you laughing again."

George nodded, the side of his mouth lifting.  "I think he would too."

**xii.**

Luna found him sitting on the front step of _The Quibbler_ office later that evening.  The sky had begun to streak with pinks as the sun went down beyond the buildings.  She looked at him curiously, taking a seat beside him and reaching out to touch the smooth skin of his cheek.   George closed his eyes for a moment at the touch, but at the same time reached out to take hold of her elbow.  He didn't want her to fly away so soon.

"You look better," she said, a smile in her voice.

"I feel better," he said, his eyes opening to meet hers.  "I'm not all the way there, but partway is better than nothing."

"Partway is extraordinary."

"Thank you for putting me in touch with—"

His words were cut off by the soft press of her mouth against his.  George tensed for a brief moment, a little worrying voice saying that he wasn't ready for this.  But the fingertips that had been against his cheek moved into his hair and George told the voice to stuff it.  His arm slipped around her shoulders and he kissed her back.

**xiii.**

"You really should do something about the infestation of wrackspurts in your workroom," Luna said, carrying a box of ton-tongue toffees up from storage.  "I've never seen it so bad.  No wonder things went all sideways for you."

George had to laugh.  "Well _that_ explains it."

Luna brushed some storage dust from her skirt before climbing up onto a chair and then the counter so she could put the toffees on a tall shelf.  The last thing that the shop needed was another incident with visiting children getting into things that they ought not get into.  George leaned back against the counter and looked at her before reaching out to run a finger along the back of her leg.

He loved her.

He wasn't quite ready to say so.  Those words would come with time.  But he did.  Desperately so.  His bruised heart had slowly begun to mend and make room for something other than despair and that something was her.  With all of her silliness and with all of her eccentricities.  She'd flown into his life at just the right moment and it might have taken him some time to see the importance of it.

But she'd managed where no one else had.


End file.
